On Jan. 7, the chairman of the Yesh Atid Party, Yair Lapid, met with his friend Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende at the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv. The media barely covered the meeting by the former finance minister with a top foreign diplomat, but for Lapid it was very important to set aside time for the meeting despite his heavy campaign schedule. In an interview with Al-Monitor, mostly dedicated to diplomatic issues, Lapid said relations with Norway were crucial for the future of the diplomatic process, given the important role the Norwegians played in the October 2014 Gaza rehabilitation conference.

Unlike the previous election campaign two years ago, the Lapid of 2015 obviously intends to be far more dominant and clear on issues of diplomacy. In the meeting with the Norwegian minister, for example, he found it important to say that another round of negotiations with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas won't be of any help and therefore the correct solution is an arrangement facilitated by the Arab League and supported by the other states in the region.

Al-Monitor:  You were a member of the diplomatic-security cabinet for almost two years, you were part of the negotiating team with the Palestinians and you saw the dynamics up close. Is Abbas to blame for the failure of the talks?

Lapid:  A decisive part of the responsibility for the failure lies on him. We are indeed in an election campaign and it’s customary to blame political rivals for all and everything, but the truth is that Abbas was the one who caused the negotiations to fall apart when he went to Washington and sat across from [President Barack] Obama and announced that he does not accept [Secretary of State John] Kerry’s proposed framework agreement. Israel would have accepted it because, if necessary, Tzipi [Livni, then chief Israeli negotiator] and I would have imposed it on Bibi [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu]. But then they refused to back down on the release of the fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners [from Israeli jails].